Whispering Quilts tells the story of a young Dahomian girl who was sold or traded into slavery on the West African Slave Coast in the late 18th century, brought to America, and bought by a Southern rice planter; she is renamed Charlotte. Although a new identity was forced on the young girl, she does not lose her sense of who she was: an African queen, and a warrior. Half a century later, her progeny attempt an escape from the brutality of the southern plantation to freedom in Canada in 1850. To fail in this attempt means possible torture or death... Will they make it?

Although a work of fiction; most of the experiences of the main characters are rooted in historical facts based on firsthand accounts of former slaves, as recorded in the Slave Narratives and other historical sources. Many abolitionists and places mentioned in connection with the Underground Railroad are historically accurate.